Sean Dorsett knew something was wrong when he dropped anchor off his commercial fishing boat in a sheltered bay by Langara Island. Something just didn’t feel right. Dorsett, 40, who had pulled in to weather a storm, knew he’d have to dive down to unhook the anchor in the morning.

For the certified diver, it was all part of a day’s work. But on September 8, 2004, Sean Dorsett didn’t resurface.

“He went down, assessed the situation. The anchor was tangled. He came up, gave the deckhand instructions to give him a knife. He went down again,” said his widow, Linda Dorsett.

To the 18-year-old deckhand who was on board with Dorsett, everything looked all right at first — Dorsett’s regulator kept sending up bubbles. When it became apparent Dorsett had been submerged for too long, the deckhand called for help.

“He was on the job, he was doing his job,” Dorsett said. The mother of two boys, who were aged 5 and 10 at the time, never expected her husband wouldn’t come home from work.

“I was in shock. I didn’t believe it. I kept calling his cellphone, I wanted to talk to the fishing company, his buddies, anyone that could tell me this was a mistake,” Dorsett said.

The tragedy changed everything for the Campbell River woman, who was her husband’s business partner. She had to break the news to her children, there were decisions to make and endless paperwork.

On her youngest son’s first day of kindergarten, Dorsett had to select an urn for her husband’s ashes. “That happened on the same day,” she said.

April 28 is a national Day of Mourning for those who have lost their lives due to workplace accidents or work-related illnesses. Events are scheduled across the province and country, and Dorsett will be sharing her story at a public ceremony at Jack Poole Plaza at the Vancouver Convention Centre at 10:30 a.m. Monday, along with others who have lost loved ones or been injured on the job.

In 2013 there were 128 work-related deaths in B.C. Sixty-seven of those were the result of occupation-related illness, with previous exposure to asbestos accounting for the majority.

Since 2009, Dorsett has worked as a peer volunteer with WorkSafeBC’s Family Peer Support program, counselling other families that have lost a loved one on the job.

Although volunteers receive training, Dorsett said, “We are not trained therapists. All we are is someone that has been through a workplace accident and death. I try not to direct the conversation, I let them talk about whatever they want or need to.”

Sometimes, Dorsett said, family members just need to talk about their loved one because they miss them; other times they are overwhelmed by the avalanche of paperwork they suddenly have to contend with in the midst of shock and grief.

“There can be a lot of anxiety around the paperwork that has to be filled out. Any death has a lot of paperwork, but this kind of death might have a coroner’s report, a possible inquest, death certificates have to go out ... they feel like their own life has been lost, they don’t know where they belong in the world.”

Dorsett felt the same way: she had to figure out how to support her family. She leased the trawler, and sold fish out of her garage.

WorkSafeBC tries to match peer support volunteers with family members with similar profiles. Dorsett knows the issues that face kids, because she had to deal with the crisis her children were plunged into. “Often the kids get pushed aside, their feelings don’t get heard.”

In Dorsett’s case, the kids were ostracized at school and in the small community where they lived. “They went from happy, healthy, bubbly kids to shy, reserved and confused,” said Dorsett. “They had to drop out of soccer. Everywhere we went, people stared and whispered, so it was hard for them to escape the sadness of it all.”

Finally Dorsett said she “stomped into the school” and confronted the principal. She explained that the death of the boys’ father had to be discussed, it had to be explained to the other kids so they would know “it’s not contagious.”

Although it was difficult for everyone, Dorsett said once the kids’ teachers discussed it and explained the accident to the kids’ friends, and everyone had a chance to make a card, both the kids and their friends were able to move on.

“Death has to be normalized for kids,” Dorsett said.

Her eldest son is 19 and enrolled in university. She has seen her kids recover and blossom, and she too has found her footing in life again.

“I chose early on in my grieving to step into it, not to dive into the bottle or some other way of dealing with it.”

Dorsett feels honoured to participate in the program. “It’s essential, because it’s such a difficult time.”

Although as a peer support volunteer her job is “mostly to listen,” Dorsett does have some advice for those whose lives have not been touched by this kind of tragedy. “Have insurance, insure your mortgage, have a will, have a plan to cover everything, especially if you have kids.”

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Campbell River woman helps others cope after her husband’s fishing death

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